


The Balm of Gilead

by lucius_complex



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 23:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucius_complex/pseuds/lucius_complex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many poultices he can make, but only one ingredient he needs to cure everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> For the wonderful Caroline Lamb, on the advent of her 2012 birthday.

 

 

    

 

 

**The Balm of Gilead – Part 1**

by Lucius Complex

 

1

 

_His soul stretched tight across the skies_

_that fade behind a city block_

_Or trampled by insistent feet,_

_at four and five and six o’clock_

 

 

The doctors are not the type who linger to chat, nor are they predisposed towards kindliness. More often than not, they didn’t speak to the man, and he would not understand the low guttural tongue of goblins anyway.

For two months or maybe more he lays, in that windowless room, and endures with silence the immoderate repetitions of feeding and wiping and bandage changing. At some point of time he notices the straps on the bed; perhaps they were used – his memory is hazy. He lays there and dreams of open windows and the sun on his bare arms.

He wakes up one day and decides to forget the sound of his own voice, forgets the past, forgets the war. The memories swirl away from him, as if into a sinkhole. They are rags. They look like a dementor’s rags, a potion master’s robes.

As the days grow longer and more lucid, and he is done discarding the unwanted memories like so many expired tins, the man begins to catalogue the remaining ones. He finds that he has half a dozen good memories of folding _origami_ , of all things. He remembers the first time he stepped – well, broke into (muggle crowds are just ridiculous) the Louvre. He relives the memory of his one experience of trick-o’-treating (just _take_ what you want dear, go on) and ending up with a wealth of nougats and liquorices and one inexplicable peach danish. (Here mum. S’got peaches on ‘em and I already had two.) He realises he has been good at lying even at that tender age, but it was only much later that he picked up the art of lying to himself.

Well. There would be no more of that from now on. Besides, how do you lie anymore when you’ve no longer got a tongue?

‘You see you are alive,’ one of the goblins finally rasps at him one day.

He nods and tries not to roll his eyes. Perhaps stating the obvious is a goblin trait he’s never noticed before.

‘As you no doubt have guessed, your trachea and jugular veins will not grow back. We cannot repair any vocal chords severed by such lacerations. The laryngectomy was performed to aid healing; and it shall someday make it easier for you to use an artificial voice.’

The man nodded, to show he understood.

‘We have extracted the venom from your blood, even your heart. There is some impact on both of the atrium, which might weaken your immune system permanently, but– ’ the goblin paused. ‘It was clever of you, nevertheless to seek treatment here. Something your primitive human techniques cannot hope at this juncture to achieve. You realise, Mr Snape, that this puts you in goblin debt?’

He nods again, familiar with the concept of recompense.

‘We have brought your contract. ’

The man shrugs. He has been paying for something or other his entire life; in money or in blood, the point was moot and in any case out of his hands. With a trembling arm, he scratches his initials with the provided quill and drops exhausted back on the bed.

He’d never speak again, but the thought suits him just fine.

In fact some part of him thinks it might just be too good to be true.

*

 

_I am moved by fancies that are curled_

_Around these images, and cling:_

_The notion of some infinitely gentle_

_Infinitely suffering thing_

 

Severus never imagined taking up baking, of all things.

Every year the part he mentally designates as ‘kitchen’, encroaches a little more into the rest of the house. Somewhere along the line the secretary in the landing stops holding letters and starts to holding cake stands and the muggle mixing machine he never learnt to use. Its a sight that still mystifies him – but not quite enough to do something about it. 

Severus makes his own cream and keeps seven types of sugar on hand (raw, muscovado, castor, inverted, icing, date sugar, and cubes for tea). He cracks his eggs four at a time, scattering sticky, desiccated shells all over the counter. Most days the windows are flung open to cool the trays of confections that march out of his ovens to supply the patisseries and tea houses of neighbouring villages; leftovers (along with new experiments) are petrified and stuck onto the walls; initially to double up as edible advertising, then as a source of amusement, and subsequently to see if he really could (and dared to) cover an entire house with pastries. He’s very, very near to succeeding.

The baking produces a vast number of grimy pans and sticky stirring spoons, so after four o’clock (and tea) there is washing and wiping and sweeping, and rolls of baking paper and foil to ball up and discard. There are sauces and preserves to boil and bottle; and because Severus wouldn’t touch muggle preservatives with the safe side of his dragonhide gloves, there is food colouring to make. From scratch. Boiled on enamel plated basins and left to cool in the garden, his walkway turns into a giant’s watercolour palette.

Of course with so much time and so much silence, Severus also unearths a few surprises about himself. Like the fact that he likes big windows. He likes to wind up his hair (which has taken to growing like a weed) and stab it with the pointy end of a chopstick. He likes the six looming bee towers in the garden that ensure nobody ever comes knocking, no matter how alluring the smell - the honey is just a bonus. He likes mixing cracked pink peppercorns into the cocoa powder. The new minimal-calorie Devonshire cream he invented will make him very rich one day. The tea is now stirred widdershins. There are days where he’d rather wear blue.

He can do all these things, now that he doesn’t have to waste time on thinking with words.

He wonders what took him so long.

*

Of course, he should have known Harry Potter would one day come charging in to overturn his well-tuned domestic tranquillity; when it’s all said and done, he really should have foreseen and preparedfor said interference. After all, interference is the reason Potter exist; moulded and ministry-sanctioned and decorated with red and yellow icing and looking absolutely child-safe, like a toy fire truck; and twice as ridiculous.

The way Severus discovers Potter’s encroachment is the same way bad news generally finds him; by turning up on his front door. In today’s particular instance, it was by leaving his sanctuary unattended for the forty-five minutes it takes to procure his marketing supplies and subsequently return to a wide-opened gate, muddy footprints, and somebody trying to eat his house. Or rather, his black and white éclair drainpipes. He’s marginally gratified when Potter jumps almost out of his skin after a tap on the shoulder.

‘Oh god, I’m just so very sorry. I really didn’t mean to e-eat your house,’ Potter babbles in that inane way of his, fingers streaked with stolen chocolate. ‘I just- um, it smelled so good. And I, uh just kinda thought I’d find some nice old lady living here, ah—‘ He trails off abruptly, then looks more panicked than ever.

‘Not that you look like a lady, of course. Even with th- the apron.’

Severus stares in dismay at the messy-haired man stuttering in front of him. Words fail him. Actually, he doesn’t think in words anymore, hadn’t done so in years. He thinks in ingredients now, measures life and the passage of time by sugar and teabags.

‘Erm. So I’d be glad to pay for your… your roof. Would you like to stick this back? I only took a couple of bites. My name is Harry, by the way. H-Harry Evans.’

Severus glances down at the half eaten éclair that Potter has shoved into his hands. Of course. He’s forgotten that the brat would no longer recognise him; nobody can. He gestures at the gate and Potter’s eyes follows, but refuses to take the hint.

‘So do you mind if I come in for a bit, buy a couple of these… round things, and the layered cakes on the window looks pretty good… I hope you don’t mind if I –‘ He suddenly looks stricken. ‘I’m sorry, I keep talking and talking, and you… you don’t speak, do you?’

Instead of nodding, Severus wilfully turns his back on Potter and hurries to his front door. Naturally the brat interprets this as an invitation, stray dog that he is, and slips in behind him. His glare is met by an embarrassed smile, but no intention to leave. Severus is not even surprised.

‘I’m so sorry. I feel really bad about… outside. You house _smells amazing._ But I really should have asked, and waited or something…‘ Potter comes to a halt in front of his work table, where he happened to have spent the morning frosting summer fruits, and his eyes widen with wonderment. ‘Wow. Just _wow_. Your life must be amazing.’

He purses his lips and considers his options. Trespassing. Wilful destruction of private property. Stealing, and then having the gal to invite himself for a cup of tea. It was clear some things never change. Severus should boot the troublemaker out; instead he fills the kettle and hunts around for that extra mug he has that’s never seen the light of day. Potter looks so pathetically grateful, it’s hard not to wince.

Over tea, Harry ‘Evans’ makes up abysmal stories and wolfs down enough palmiers to feed a Quiditch team.

 ‘I sell sport supplies, usually down in the town centres but this week I thought I’d take the road less travelled. You know, take in some sights, look for new opportunities...’

Severus almost chokes on his tea. What a terrible liar. The world knows Harry Potter is an Auror, as if the brat ever had any other career options besides ‘future Head Auror’ or ‘future Headmaster’ -at least not as long as he carries that palpable sense of _want-to-please_ and _please-love-me_ everywhere.

‘Merlin, this is absolutely delicious. Better than chocolate frogs.’

Before Severus could be offended by the comparison, the brat looks around and adds wistfully. ‘I wish I stayed in a house like this. This is what I grew up thinking magic is like – and you keep beehives outside too. Cor, I think THIS place is the real Honeydukes you know? Or what its supposed to represent.’

Severus listens and keeps quiet, keeps even his features quiet and says nothing, nothing at all. He’s afraid he might burst into ironic laughter that, once started, will never stop.

Afterwards, when the dishes were cleared and he attempted to shoo his unwanted guest out through the fireplace, Potter suddenly turns around, crushing a giant bag of pastries to his chest and gazing at Severus as if he was Dumbledore. Or Pomfrey.

‘Do you mind if I come back sometime? To… pick up more of these?’

In hindsight, Severus realised he should have kept something bigger than bees. With more teeth.

*

The brat comes back again a week later; and as for his excuses for turning up again in the village (‘I dropped my portkey’); well, Severus has never heard anything more pathetic. Or more patently a lie.

In the following weeks, the excuses get lamer: _There’s this potluck and I need cauldron cakes. I’ve got a new broom to show around the area. I think it’s going to storm. Gosh it gets thirsty around here!_ Until one day Potter falters at the door when Severus shot him a particularly withering look, and finally stops lying.

After that Potter talks less but brings more to the table; copies of the daily prophet, muggle music, red wine, gnocchi that slides into the mouth like pieces of silk, second hand cookbooks. Sometimes Potter brings strawberry beer. It goes surprisingly well with the strucchi.

He hates himself for coming to anticipate these visits.

In a different time, a different life, Severus would be incensed by Potter’s presumptuousness; mortally offended. He would have railed against the heavens for making him part of a world that includes people like Potter, but suddenly remember that there was no such thing as heaven or for that fact fairness, and become even angrier. 

In a different life Severus would have swelled with the righteous knowledge that some things are just _known_ , and Harry Potter would _always_ interfere, never knowing to leave something alone. He is the boy who would chance upon some fledging bird on the ground, valiantly risking life and limb to climb the tree and with gentle fingers put it back, never mind the offensive scents on his skin that would cling like oil on every bark and twig; leaving the compromised adult birds no choice but to abandon its nest of offspring to starve to death, or push the fledglings out to break their necks on the ground below.

Now he can (almost) console himself that the boy could hardly have turned out any other way, growing up on the milk of loss and death and the Dumbledore Theory of Multiple Destructions Being Better Than One, as long as A Good Heart and some Lemon Sorbet was involved.   

And because he’s a fool, he allows ‘Evans’ with the half-starved eyes and the sadness palpable around him into his life,  and Potter looks at him with so much quiet gratitude that he wonders if he’s starting to channel Molly Weasley. Or Pomfrey.

It became a weird world that Severus found himself in. When he was a miserable half-starved child dreaming of Hogwarts and escape, Severus would never thought he’d become a Death Eater. And when he was a Death Eater dreaming of death and escape, he’d never thought he’d become a baker. And now…

And now Potter shows up every week as if he has nowhere else to go, and sinks with a sigh into the kitchen chairs as if there was nowhere else he’d rather be. Potter pops up, like toast; pressing his face on the windows (grubby handprints everywhere) and grinning like he already had too much sugar for breakfast. Severus imagines that if the boy owed a tail, he’d wag it.

He tries to sneer at this, and realises with some shock that he’s forgotten how.

Sometimes when the skyline or foliage is spectacular they levitate the table outdoors, and Harry erects a shield around the bee hives, not bothering to explain how a mere civilian happens to know such a defensive spell.  Severus shrugs and lets the small deceptions pass, the way neither of them mention (not that he _can_ , mind you) that his visitor has also begun to leave hints of his real identity here and there, at an atrocious attempt at being sneaky and not-quite offhand. Severus ignores them all. The brat would figure out by himself soon enough.

What he _does not_ expect is for Potter to stand outside his window one night with the most woebegone face, and a suitcase, and no home.

*


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are many poultices he can make, but only one ingredient he needs to cure everything.

 

 

 

The Balm of Gilead – Part 2

by Lucius Complex

 

2

_You’ve asked me what the lobster is weaving_

_there with his golden feet?_

_I reply, the oceans knows this._

_You say, what is the ascidia waiting for_

_in its transparent bell? What is it waiting for?_

_I tell you it is waiting for time, like you._

There is a part of Severus that bitterly resents it, being saddled once again with the job of being nanny to Harry Potter; especially when he’s not Severus Snape anymore. To know that there was no place in which he could hide from the past, and no matter the reincarnation, this fetter would follow and find him.

There is a part of Severus that bitterly resents it.

_*_

‘So. Are you ever going to tell me your name?’ Harry asks for the umpteenth time since moving in, elbow deep in soapy water and purposely ignoring the older man’s warning glare.

 

He waits for a minute, and continues to speak cheerfully to himself. ‘I guess it’s going to be ‘Pastryman’ for the foreseeable future then. Don’t you ever get tired of having everyone call you that? Pastryman. Heh, sounds almost like a superhero. I think that could be a good line to call some of the new stuff – catchy. Something for the kids.’ He stops scrubbing. ‘I think I’ll call you… Mr P. How ‘bout that? It’s a cool name; I saw this character on telly once, and his name was Mr P—‘

 

Severus used to pitch a fit whenever Harry gave him a new nickname, but after realizing that the brat will change his mind and bequeath a new one upon him every few days, he stops caring.

 

Besides, he’s seen the Mr P on muggle television that Harry was referring to, and it’s almost.. flattering.

 

*

‘So the, erm, foamy triangle thing’s _sort_ of wilted, again.’

Exasperated, Severus points at the bowl.

‘Er, did I used the wrong bowl? Or… maybe I let the bowl get too warm?’

Severus nods curtly, and snaps his fingers.

‘Speed, yes, yes. Do everything faster.’

Potter has a tendency to grin like an idiot whenever Severus nods his acquiesces.

*

He tries not to grimace when Potter veritably flounces into the kitchen.

‘Guess who just persuaded old Mister Smyth to double his orders of Easter Cakes three weeks ahead of time?’ the younger man announces with a smarminess that could give any of the Malfoy’s serious competition.

Severus claps politely.

‘The Potter touch, ladies and gentleman. Clearly haven’t lost it.’

Severus crosses over to the new duty roster- a huge thing filled with colourful scribbles and criss-crosses --  to pick up the fattest red marker he could find.

‘Hey, you aren’t thinking-‘ Harry scurries over to peer at the extra duties being filed under his name in dismay. ‘But, I thought we were going to make those orders _together_. I’ll be up all night if I do it all alone…’

 **PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT** , Severus smugly writes in big red letters.

*

‘Would you mind if I asked – why you never used considered using an artificial voice?’

Severus cocks an eyebrow over his afternoon papers.

‘I mean. I’ve been reading up –’

Severus rolls his eyes to show what he thinks of that.

‘Look I _do_ read. Just because I don’t go through your toffee-nosed stuff, doesn’t mean – hey!’

The (frankly quite perfect) folds of delicate green icing that Harry has been working on crumbles instantly on the impact of mug knocking on table.

‘Mature yeah, that was real mature,’ Harry said, glaring from a sink-hole wreckage of mint-tinted cream. ‘Do you know how long it took me to get to this stage?’

Severus feigns innocence.

*

They do not always have a ball. Severus is a minute man, a man obsessed with ruthlessly breaking down and curating even the smallest actions that makes up the details of his daily life. He is obsessed with making sure that every day is calculated to be _perfect_. He’s obsessed by his own, infinitely more superior laws of how the universe, _his_ universe, is supposed to behave. And Potter is too rough, too primitive, too bloody presumptuous.

Living with the man made it painfully obvious to Severus that whilst Potter has been raised to kill Death Eaters and Vanquish All The Bleeding Evil In The World, nobody has taught the boy to grow up. Or be a person. Hence the brat’s inability to find his own corner of the world to belong to (and stay out of his). Hence Potter’s inability to cotton on to basic ideas of personal privacy.

Even Potter’s personal care has huge, appalling gaps, and whilst Severus knows that Potter has been brought up with little breeding, his continuing lack of awareness confounds Severus, who even caught him using his toothbrush on his ears one day. An experience that subsequently lead to the very humiliating experience of Teaching Potter How To Take A Proper Shower.

Severus would find the whole affair disgusting if he didn’t also find so wretched. He would kick the boy out on his arse, if he isn’t so aware of a quiet part of his own mind that had once wasted a youth, secretly  wondering what other people knew growing up, that he didn’t; what worldly knowledge he lacked that renders Severus so strange, set him thus apart.

It is extraordinary and disquieting, seeing the most uncomfortable parts of himself in Harry Potter, of all people.  

And then, there are the small tense moments where eyes would meet in the middle of a (one sided) discussion about oven output versus efficiency, and the words and numbers would suddenly come to an abrupt stop; important points of conversation scattering as if they were old leafs blown away by a passing breeze. As if they cover something else, something with a pulse.

Those have a tendency of happening more frequently now.

*

It’s Potter who first thinks of making a creation imbued with a dose of the Felix Felicis. Once exposed, he has a surprising enthusiasm for making money, though luckily nobody has really taught him how to spend it yet.

Even Severus has to admit it is a particularly inspired idea.

They argue and discuss, discuss and experiment with models, eventually settling on the form of a frosted phoenix. Things come to a head when it’s discovered that out of the handful of people out there who has the expertise in producing the potion- the best of them is dead, the good ones unaffordable, and mediocre ones downright dangerous. Harry begins to spend more time waxing on about ‘the brilliant but misunderstood Potions Master’ he studied under in Hogwarts; there’s a catch in his voice that Severus ignores. _(Ah, Severus my boy. You could have been anything, if only you could convince yourself you deserved it…)_ Instead, he digs another hole and buries another secret, digs another hole and hides another piece of his past.

Harry tries to brew his own Felex Felis and Severus watches him fail four times, and his silence endures.

He is not having any of it. Severus has toiled in the world too long, building things for other people. Potter is _not_ going to take his castle away, even if happens to be spun out of cane sugar.

*

  
 _Like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,_ __  
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,  
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

He has not touched a cauldron in years, and did not want to start again. But Severus is used (and trained, trained like a circus dog) to doing what he loaths. And that is how Harry catches him, making one of the world’s most valuable potions surreptitious, in the shadows. Like he is ashamed.

‘Who are you,’ Potter whispers, but Severus knows its not a question, not really.

‘Finite Incantatem,’ Potter says, and nothing happens. They both stand blinking at each other, the remnants of his wand’s magical discharge crackling and electric between them.

Harry draws his wand out and points it at his chest. His mouth is tight, knuckles clenched. ‘Who. The hell. Are you?’

Severus opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

‘Legilimens,’ Potter whispers, and Severus is impaled, trussed up and hung for dissection. He feels his skin stripping, the goblin magic that caged his flesh for so long, melting like wax from his body. He staggers, trying to erect his shields- and just as abruptly gives up and lets them come crashing down.

Let Potter see. He’s always known it wouldn’t last.

When they both come out of the spell, Severus stumbles before catching himself. He clenches his teeth as bones popped and his height readjusts, pulling him up and in, as his hands turns back into white claws, as his throat tightens into a tourniquet and his lips shrivel up into his mouth, his eyes darken with remembered hates until they became black holes.

And finally it’s Severus Snape who stands in the bakery. The now ridiculous bakery, with the giant time tables and the mint and sea blue walls. His shadows falls over Potter, reaches into the corners and devour all the light.

‘Sssn—‘

Potter is white, is shaking with every hiss that escapes his lips. Potter cannot even say his name, so much did he loath it.

‘Why?’

 _Why_? How dare the brat even ask that, when it should be him, it should be _him_ –

Severus slams his open palms on the table, the walls, the bloody measuring cups, laying his proprietorship on everything. This is mine. And _this_ , this is mine. These are all mine, _mine._ MINE. He tears the charts off the walls, smashes all the glasses, sweep the trays to the ground. He wants to throttle the arrogant idiot and _scream_ , scream that that they were having this argument in HIS HOUSE; and it’s ALL HIS, it’s HIS LIFE that was on the line-  _you god damn usurping little shit-_

He staggers backwards when a body slams against him, shoving him into a shelf.

‘I’ve built a home here too!’ Harry shouts into his face. ‘You goddamn selfish bastard, you aren’t the _only_ one.’

He does the only thing he can do; the only thing a creature such as him is allowed to do: Accio Harry’s suitcase and dump it out in the rain. Grabs his ex-student by the collar and wrestles him out of the house. His own goddamn home.

Harry collects himself and his suitcase and stands there for long moments in the downpour, just looking at him. All the fight seems to have seeped from him, washed away by the steadily beating rain. His body shrinks.

‘How could you give me everything and then yank it away?’ Harry asks, almost to himself, before turning to gaze steadily at Severus. ‘Hadn’t we both lived through enough of that? With Dumbledore?’

Severus reels as if he’d been slapped. Truth was pain, he’s always known that, but he has not felt so crushed by someone else in years, not since Dumbledore with his surgical precision and scalpel-thin words, not since Lily and the flashing fishing-hooks she sunk into his heart, hooks that made him flinch with every curve of her smile, every toss of her hair.

Long after Harry Apparates away, he remains under in the rain. There is nowhere to go.

There are no May flowers.

*

It’s hard after that, going back into a vacuum. It’s more difficult than he ever anticipated. Some days, Severus wants to die from the insurmountable greyness of it all. And some days, the world was so beautiful, _so_ beautiful, he thinks his heart would break from trying to hold in all in. Both instances make him weep.  Once upon a time he had the might of Hogwarts, and the wonders of goblin medicine. Who will heal him this time, his desiccated life; his desiccated heart?

If only the students could see their dreary potions master now. An idiot. A _child._

Summer moves on and Severus bakes, filling orders and loading up the cartons for pick-ups mechanically.  He continues to brew the Felix Felicis, because he doesn’t know what else to do. Stores them in rows and rows of tiny vials that sit on the shelf and break whatever sunlight they catch into a spectrum of shattered rainbows on the walls.

He does not resurrect the façade that the goblins have given him. Let the world see, Severus does not care, and to his relief neither does anyone else. Life resumes, if a little more lonely; with a little less colour than before. Sunsets come and go. Sometimes he sits in the garden, sipping strawberry beer. It is lovely, when paired with the strucchi.

Softly, quietly, he learns to let go; slowly, he learns to let baker and potions master merge. It didn’t kill him.

As summer approaches it last legs he resuscitates all his favourite subscriptions and takes long rambling walks with his overcoat stuffed with cheese bridies and the latest potion journal. He falls asleep under the trees and wake up cursing the ants that crawled over his tunic. He feeds the birds with the swept up crumbs from his kitchens; one day he’ll think about building a bird bath for the little featherbrains. It will make a good project for the colder months.

Finally, on one unremarkable evening, when the murmuring wind wakes Severus up just in time to catch the first falling leaf, and he looks up and realises how chilly it’s getting, realises also for the first time in a very real way that he, Severus Snape, a man who thinks he has no good reason for his own existence… He would be all right.

Walking home, it’s the first time he regrets his inability to whistle.

When he arrives at his gate, it is to find it wide open and tracked with muddy footprints, and someone trying to eat his house. Or rather, the profiteroles framing his front door. And Potter turns around with a mouthful of smeared vanilla cream, looking vaguely guilty and awkward and absolutely child-safe like the most harmless of dolls (though he isn’t, not by a long shot). Severus is reminded that this is how trouble has a penchant for finding him, by turning up at his front door and sometimes eating it.

Potter looks at him, and looks at him, and finally his hands drop and he takes a step forward and mouths something that Severus can barely see, but perhaps its ‘I’m sorry.’

Perhaps this is the final step.

Severus hesitates. He doesn’t want – he’s grown comfortable…

Once, he dreamt of glossy, patient rivers that quietly poured themselves into the ocean. Once he dreamt of the self-sufficiency of trees. Potter is none of these things. Potter is all brittle glass and self-contained hunger; loneliness trickling out of hairlines cracks. Potter is all desperate eyes and stupid spectacles, something no wizard actually even needs to wear, and Severus has never been so afraid. Because Harry Potter is-

Harry Potter is … a bridge.

Harry… is a bridge. Harry is a foreign country, a language he doesn’t speak but has somehow learnt to understand. In Harry he sees continuum, the connection (perhaps reconnection) of past and present. Harry has become both responsibility and exoneration, and also none of these. And somewhere in there and almost inaudible, he brings with him the sweet, whispering possibility of a future.

Severus Snape has nothing and everything to lose; and he closes his eyes, to take in a deep breath.

And he goes home.

 

_*_

_Perhaps not to be is to be without your being_ __  
without your going, that cuts noon light  
like a blue flower, 

_Without the torch you lift in your hand_ _  
that others may not see as golden,_

_Without, in the end, your being, your coming_ __  
suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life,  
blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze:

 _And it follows that I am, because you are:_ __  
It follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we:  
and, because of love, you will, I will,  
We will, come to be. 

_*_

_For Carolinelamb with love. All poetry from Pablo Naruda._


End file.
